In a file system virtualization environment, a configuration of the entire virtualized file system is stored in a file virtualization device. This configuration may represent one or more services representing one or more virtual file systems. However, in the event of a disaster rendering the entire virtualized file system in a malfunctioning or a completely inoperable state, it is difficult to immediately switch over to a secondary site to continue providing services to clients in a non-disruptive manner. Further, in the event of a partial failure rendering a portion of the virtual file system inoperable, it is difficult to immediately switch over those affected portions to a secondary site in a non-disruptive manner. In such conventional file systems, configuration information from the file virtualization device at a primary data center site has to be manually imported and then enabled at the data recovery or secondary data center site before failed services can be provided again. Further, in such conventional systems, when the failure is resolved at the primary data center site, similar manual techniques have to be applied again to switch all or a portion of failed services back to the primary data center site, thereby resulting in disruption of service to the client devices. Further, such manual techniques of failing a portion or all services over to the secondary site are not only time consuming, but are also highly error prone. In another scenario, if a customer deploying the file virtualization device elects to purchase newer, faster file virtualization device, existing snapshots are difficult to transfer to the new file virtualization device. Alternatively, if the customer wishes to split a virtual volume on a file virtualization device into two or more volumes, there is no technique or system that lets the new volumes to be automatically reflected in a new virtual snapshot that provides information about the splitting of the original volume into two or more volumes.
In yet another scenario, if a customer is using file server based replication for data and file virtualization device clusters are front-ending both primary and disaster recovery (or, backup) sites, conventional file virtualization systems fail to efficiently make the replicated configuration between the primary and the secondary data recovery data center site in real-time.
Furthermore, using current file virtualization devices, maintaining the configuration updates while at the same time performing operations such as reconfiguring a file switch, upgrading, renaming, mounting and/or unmounting a new volume, coalescing multiple volumes into a lesser number of volumes, splitting one volume into a plurality of volumes, and other events that alter the configuration is complex, time consuming, and error prone. Unfortunately, current file virtualization systems fail to address the above-noted and other problems associated with resolving latency issues and failing over to a secondary site smoothly.